This week Ram Dass says…
"We all go through this feeling of not feeling quite safe about love. And when we feel it, there is a tremendously strong tendency to want to hold it and to grasp it and to collect it. That grasping is coming out of a whole history of fear and lack of faith, if you will, and of deprivation. It’s like working on a deprivation model
Now, if you look at it in the sense that, in the usual way of I fell in love with this person, there’s another way of seeing that which is, this person is a stimulus, is something in the world that was just right in a key sense to release us into the place in ourselves where we are love.
What finally is required is that you give up the deprivation model, the model that says, “I’m going to run out of it, so I got to collect it.”
How would you live your life if you knew that there was always enough love? In you? For you? To share?
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Quite simply, to act from a place of knowing there is always enough love for the entirety of creation to perpetuate the highest throes of bliss in their respective lives, would naturally see me ruminating less on competitive schisms (less on individual cunning) in the social world, socially acceptable or otherwise, and more on cooperative schisms (moreso on playing your social role faithfully)…you truly can make it in this world as either a lone wolf or a tribe-member type, but I feel like ultimately we will all have to walk each other home, and one of the greater delights is for individuals to do as much directly/consciously, rather than having the society/universe do it systemically.
You would become that systemic process of universe, acting out of your own center…
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In reflection, I believe I was taught that love was conditional. Through these teachings, I feel like I am getting closer to unconditional love, simply giving it and receiving it. Seeing love in all it’s forms…It can be hard with people, but I am practicing with my pets.
Sometimes tragic events do bring us closer to love in all forms. In 2023 I went through 2 pet hospice situations, one 10 days and the other 8 weeks. My kitten was 10 months old dying of FIP in January and my sweet older cat got cancer at 15 years in May. I’ve worked in a nursing home helping the bedridden and dying; it felt like reliving that experience, carrying them around, helping them drink and eat, cleaning up messes, dealing with pain and comforting them. Plus later the extreme sorrow and grief because we loved them so much. I used a pet loss therapy group on Facebook, and found myself giving love to grieving pet owners as much as I received it.
In between, we opened our hearts and adopted a scared shy needy shelter cat in March to become friends/brothers with our remaining cat, requiring extreme patience and kindness to help this scared guy trust us, be happy, and calm down during his frequent panic attacks.
Through those experiences this year, we realized that any cat we bring in and love will have a wonderful life, no matter how long or short. There is enough love for all of them and for us.
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Pets love unconditionally too.
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